Instructor and Consultant, Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic, International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), Special Projects in the Study of Central and Eastern Europe,” Summer 1995.

Publications:

Texas A&M University Press has released a paperback edition of Czech Voices: Stories from Texas in the Amerikán národní kalendář . Originally published in 1991, Czech Voices: Stories from Texas in the Amerikán národní kalendářcomprises ten short memoir-essays written by some of the earliest Czech immigrants to Texas. Translated and edited by Clinton Machann and James W. Mendl, Jr., Czech Voices: Stories from Texas in the Amerikán národní kalendářoffers a clear window to the lives of Czech immigrants on a difficult frontier.

Katherine Anne Porter, best known for her novel Ship of Fools, was an inveterate traveler—a cosmopolitan jet-setter in the days before jets. But she was of humble origins, born in 1890 in the tiny hamlet of Indian Creek, Texas, and christened Callie Russell Porter. For most of her life she maintained a stormy relationship with her home state. That relationship is documented in a book published by Texas A&M University Press in 1990, the centennial of the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer’s birth.

Krasna Amerika (Beautiful America) will make Texans of Czech descent proud of their heritage. Various aspects of Czech Texan life are presented in a scholarly yet lively manner. The book tells the story of early Czech settlements in Texas; about the persistence of the Czech language in subsequent generations; the folklore, music, festivals, Czech cooking and much more.

Offering provocative readings of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, Clough’s Amours de Voyage, and Browning’s The Ring and the Book, Clinton Machann brings to bear the ideas and methods of literary Darwinism to shed light on the central issue of masculinity in the Victorian epic. This critical approach enables Machann to take advantage of important research in evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, among other scientific fields, and to bring the concept of human nature into his discussions of the poems.

Lawrence H. Konecny and Clinton Machann take readers beyond the bare facts to the human stories of immigration from the point of view of English and Czech immigrants whose tales provide fascinating counterpoints to each other and to the glowing claims about Texas made in William Kingsbury’s pamphlet. Perilous Voyages: Czech and English Immigrants to Texas in the 1870s combines the original text of Kingsbury’s 1877 pamphlet, a private diary kept by an Englishman named William Wright, and oral histories by descendants of Moravian immigrants to allow modern readers to experience some of the lure that brought people to the state in earlier days.

Other Publications:

Czech-Americans in Transition (1999)

Matthew Arnold: A Literary Life (1998)

The Genre of Autobiography in Victorian Literature (1994)

The Essential Matthew Arnold: An Annotated Bibliography of Major Modern Studies (1993)